An acquaintance recently wrote a long blog post about why she was leaving her job. By all standards, it was a great job: the pay was good, the hours were flexible, and her role was something that many people would covet because she was employed by the company of a famous writer, thinker and blogger.

So, why then, did she leave? She left because she did not feel that it was the right fit. Something felt off to her even though she was capable of doing the work, so she resigned.

Another acquaintance quit a job she had moved more than halfway across country to take just a few weeks after she began. Why? Because she concluded that her vision for herself and her work did not quite match that vision of the company she had decided to work for.

If you were to guess the age and generation of these women what would you say?

Mid-twenties? Generation Y? If you guessed those, you would be spot-on.

Interestingly, whether you see these two young women as being trite or heroic might depend largely on what generation you are in. It might also depend on how happy you feel with your own job or how trapped you feel by the pressure and necessity of being responsible and earning a paycheck even if you do not like what you do.

I think that this is a significant portion of what can trigger friction between generations, whether in the workplace or in the middle of an Occupy Wall Street protest. Our grandparents and parents lived through things like the world wars and the Great Depression, through Vietnam and fights for women’s rights and civil rights, and young people want to give up on a job because it feels slightly less than fulfilling? Or they want to hold out for the job that meets all of their mental and spiritual needs even if it means they cannot pay the bills in the meantime? To many, that can seem like a ridiculous and irresponsible approach to life.

Out of a combination of necessity, obligation and habit, the assumption for many people has become that work is a necessary evil: that everyone likes their weekends more than they like their Mondays, that no matter how much you might like what you do overall, there are going to be a lot of days when you simply do not feel like doing it because it is, after all, still work.

For those who are feeling relatively unhappy about their work, who dread getting up most mornings when the alarm goes off, it does not seem possible that there is a different way. It seems more reasonable to just find ways to cope with a lackluster 9-to-5 routine by decorating your cubicle, sucking down cups of coffee, running out of the office to hit up happy hour as soon as the clock strikes 5, and being one of those people who exclaims “TGIF” every time Friday rolls around.

The fact that there is an entire restaurant chain named after the phrase “Thank Goodness It’s Friday” says a lot about our society’s general relationship with work. It is something you suffer through, something you probably will not like, but something that you have to do anyway.

It is that feeling of a life sentence to something less than optimal that a lot of young people are rebelling against. They do not understand why they cannot expect or ask for something more. They feel that life is too short to waste doing work that you hate, even if that means significant lack of financial stability.

Are they wrong? Would we be a better society if more people could find work that they loved? What is the point of engaging in our constitutional right of pursuing happiness if it is something we are always in pursuit of and yet something that we never quite achieve? If someone’s pursuit of happiness places a burden on you or on society financially, should they give up the pursuit and just buckle down and do the work?

Those questions may not have clear-cut answers, but it is essential that we begin to ask.

Jessica H. Lawrence is a former CEO of Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council. She is a respected speaker, writer and frequent consultant on business, nonprofit management, social media, and the technology sector. Jessica can be reached at jessicahlawrence@gmail.com.

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